OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, announced her resignation on Wednesday after six and a half years with the company. In a memo shared with OpenAI and on X, she stated, “After much reflection, I have made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. There’s never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes, yet this moment feels right.”
Murati’s exit follows a series of high-profile departures from the startup, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever and former safety leader Jan Leike, who both left in May. Additionally, co-founder John Schulman announced last month that he would be joining rival company Anthropic.
In her memo, Murati expressed her desire to “create the time and space to do my own exploration,” while assuring her commitment to ensuring a smooth transition and maintaining the momentum that the team has built.
They’re paying employees millions at best, while those who leave can make hundreds of millions by launching their own companies. It would be crazy to stay on payroll.
Many of these high-level executives are departing because they recognize the opportunity to launch their own startups and secure substantial funding. Just look at Ilya’s new venture.
She seemed like an unexpected choice for the role, considering her background is in product management with Model X and she doesn’t appear to have a technical foundation in OpenAI’s area of work. While she clearly seems capable and may have built up her expertise during her six years there, I was still surprised she got the position in the first place.
I believe they want greater control over the progress and the involvement of various entities. While I would prefer Mira to stay, I think OpenAI will continue to advance more quickly than its competitors as long as Sam Altman is at the helm.
Some people seem out of touch with reality; the growth of LLMs represents collective human progress rather than individual decisions. There’s simply no way to move faster than by uniting many influential individuals worldwide to drive this forward.